


All Hail the Black Market

by Marasa



Series: Dynamic Stretching [5]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Aftercare, Blood, Body Horror, Fluff, M/M, Romance, black market, but vaguely, kidney, tyler's weird, underground surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:01:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: The bed of ice he's half-buried in causes him more pain than numbness.





	All Hail the Black Market

**Author's Note:**

> 'Getting what we want when we want it so bad.'

“My boy. My heart. My love.” 

Tyler's constant coddling does little to ease the pain that itches at his weak body.

The bed of ice he's half-buried in causes him more pain than numbness. Josh’s toes ache, his body trembles. He's no where as delirious as he thought he'd be upon waking from an ether sleep. 

Waking up in a bathtub full of ice is nothing like the movies.

“Did we have to be so cliche?” Josh says as his legs shift, ice slipping under his calves. He bites the tip of his tongue as he shivers.

“Well, there’s not really a handbook on this,” Tyler says. 

But there is. They just don't have $400 to drop on a medical textbook or ten plus years to spend studying the art of intensive surgery, so they settle for a quick, nameless doctor that refuses to speak and only asks for one-third of their profit.

Needs the practice more than cash, probably.

They look over at the cheap, styrofoam ice chest sitting on the bathroom counter. There's blood on the side, crusting over in a dark scab. A piece of Josh is housed just inside.

“It looks just like you,” Tyler whispers lovingly against Josh’s temple with the same joy of a new father. 

It's supposed to be funny. Josh doesn't get the joke.

Tyler’s weird. Josh can imagine him kneeling beside the bathtub like he is now, holding Josh’s wet kidney in his hands, dangly ureter and all, looking at it like it's their baby, something that they made together, something that's theirs.

It's not theirs anymore and maybe that's the joke. 

That little bean of meat will be shipped across the country, perhaps overseas, to be implanted in some ailing person that can't wait their turn on the government waitlist of legally attained kidneys. 

Josh screws up his face. “Shut up; you're gross.” 

There's a pause of consideration, humoring of Tyler’s fucked sense of humor. 

“I fucking hope it doesn't look like me,” Josh says. His eyes fly from the cooler to Tyler. “Does it really?”

Tyler rolls his eyes and swats some ice at his bare chest. “You're dumb.”

“I'm your cash cow.”

Tyler quirks an eyebrow. “Just as I am yours.”

There's a two year old scar that wraps around the left side of Tyler's waist, mangled and poorly stitched by a man who refused to remove the black hood over his head as he carved into Tyler's side.

If one of their kidneys fails now, they're both totally fucked.

Josh leans his head back on the tile behind him. He lets out a long exhale through his nose.

“What's next?” Josh says. “I'm running out of organs to sell.”

“Blood. Plasma.” Tyler shrugs. “I've been doing some research about skin harvesting. Ten dollars per square inch. Not the best, but for a little spending cash? And it's only skin. Completely doable.”

Josh hums. “You'd still love me if I had no skin?”

Tyler smiles. “I’d keep you safe from all the salt and lemon juice in the world. You'd be like my very own slug.”

He brushes Josh’s pink curls back from his sweaty forehead. His hands are stained red. Josh doesn't ask him if he really held his kidney for that long; he feels like he already knows the answer.

“You're sick, Tyler,” Josh says. “You're very, very sick and twisted.”

Tyler’s crooked teeth glisten brightly in the dim light of their bathroom.

“Oh, I love you, my darling,” Tyler says, arms wrapping around his head and nose nuzzling his sweaty hair. “You did so well.”

White hot pain erupts from the shittily stitched gash in Josh’s side. The ice on his right side turns red. The scent of blood burns his nose but he can't help but smile.

Josh is more than $10,000 richer.

And Tyler loves him.

He doesn't know which feels better.


End file.
